SAmadei

I wish I could + this up more... You got my vote. Its nice to see that some others are on the same brainwave...and can see what the real problems are, instead of having a misguided 5 second blurb that tries to treat the symptoms instead of the real problem. +10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000042 I ventured onto local TV (I normally watch only Sci channel, Com Central, Adult Swim, NatGeo) while watching football today, and seeing the current batches of mud slinging and throat cutting, its the same-old, same-old... but with a different batch of useless people who are not going to get anything done but fleece us more, both intentionally and unintentionally. It's just so bleak.

What color? There are a few on eBay.

Privacy. Unfortunately, in some places, owning too many cars is viewed as criminal... and I should have signed up with a more anonymous handle. Been considering changing it. It sucks that one has to be paranoid of data mining and data mining that doesn't exist yet. I'm also not particularly proud of my collection at the moment. I was making good progress fixing things and keeping them in OK shape... but then things changed, and I'm not real happy with them being out in the weather. Its a long story. Don't have many photos, anyway.

Can't scrimp on the details when posting a spotters guide in reply to someone who owns 6 "modern" B-bodies.

You forgot to include how to tell the '91-'94s from the '95-'96s. And... up next a spotter's guide to telling Aveos and G3s apart. ;-)

I'm talking about the wagon bodies. If you took a '77-'90 wagon and removed the trim, badges, taillights, and the front header panel/nose... it would be as hard to tell a brand on a '77-'90 as a '91-'96. '77-90 sedans/coupes, that's a totally different case. As for those G-bodies, at least on the coupes, you can still tell them apart much easier, even with the above test. Theres no mistaking the Monte's side swoop... and the rest you merely look at the quarter window. I bring this up because the B-bods are all similar enough that I've been caught a few times having trouble telling, say, a Chevy wagon from a Buick wagon, on the street from the rear, simply because I didn't see the crucial clue. (This is an essential requirement for the "Car Guy" to be able to spot the make/model/year of something in a quick glimpse, half hidden behind a truck, going in the other direction at full speed, when some non-car person calls out "Wow, what is that?"... failure to do so risks your "Car Guy" status.) Yet I go to the J-yard trying to interchange a door and unless you have them side-by-side, you can barely tell that one has a body line a 1/4" higher than the other.

Can you swap mounts? I'm sure its easier to find a decent mount and swap the actual visor.

You need to average out the price of the TripleTreds with the expected mileage. I love the Assurance TripleTreds, and have gotten 80K-110K out of them... They stick to the wet and snow that sometimes I feel like I could drive across the roof of an igloo... I can only expect the Forteras are in the same ballpark. In unrelated news, I've always wondered why people think the TripleTreds are noisy... I don't think they are that noisy... but recently, I put an old AquaTred I had on my spare and I've been using it as I fix my deteriorating rims. That AquaTred is CRAZY loud. You know, before you brought this up, it never occurred to me that I could actually fit a set a set of Fortera TripleTreds on my Caprice wagon. I had been very disappointed that they didn't make Assurance TripleTreds for the Caprice... I never thought of looking at light duty truck tires. Doh!

I've got 20~25 year old CPUs that still work. Its usually capacitors... which can be replaced easier than other components. PCMs so far haven't demonstrated massive age-related failure. Sure, plenty die or get flaky, so its something to wonder about 40, 50 years from now.

I don't like calling them heros, per se. But a incomplete list would include... Benjamin Franklin Abraham Lincoln Leonardo DaVinci Gottfried Leibniz Nikola Tesla Albert Einstein George Carlin Sam Kinison Douglas Adams Charles M. Schulz Scott Adams Linus Torvalds

Article is HERE

Since Christine is taken... And since most cars can be sinister, but not really scary... The COE from Jeepers Creepers. Can you imagine the fear on the homeowner's association parking that in front of your house? Edit: Yes, yes, I know I am stretching the definition of "automotive"...

Do you have a photo of the faceplate? I forget what year your Tahoe is. The two decent Pick-a-Part places near me had quite a few '90s GM trucks, I wouldn't mind taking a walk about. Any special tools needed to get the unit out, besides a T15?

$250? That sounds like a trip to the pick-a-part. Most HVAC control panels hold up and there should be lots to pick from for cheap.

Certainly akin to lipstick on a pig... but its an example that something could still be small, new, and still be 'American' in style. Its tough to say for sure. The site seems to be totally in Japanese. Most photos I've seen of the originals near them have some forced perspective. Apparently, the A100 is based on a Toyota Hiace. ~66" wide, 75" high, 184" long. Small by our standards, not Kei sized, though. I think those '68-'72 Chevy influenced ones are smaller, though. Edit: Actually, I think the "A100" is the largest one by a decent factor... I'm judging the sizes here on the headlights, which look to me to be the same... which means the non-"A100" Dodges vans are a decent step smaller than the "A100" ones. It also looks to me that the "Chevy" vans use the same base as the non-"A100" Dodges.

This has been around a while, so it may have been posted before... but I think they've added to their work, and some of it is pretty interesting. Its not my thing, as I'm sure I could not actually drive these little things, but at least they are good for a laugh. I can't help but wonder if GM could do something like this for a retro Microvan... or Micro-SUV... Clever how the bowtie is reversed... I can't believe they copied the '68-'72 Chevy trucks... And some Dodge lovin'... website: www.blow-net.co.jp

You read my mind, I was thinking of posting this article, as well, but I wasn't sure it would have been well received. That said, the article mentions that it can't happen here... "We Aren't Japan" (as spoken by some arrogant talking head)... but I beg to differ.

How did you do that mod? You just happen to have those letters in the correct font and size? Or did you cut them out yourself? That mod looks great... shame its not a darker car, it would be even sharper. I'm not sure I'm into the GM chiclet.

Well, the iPhone is a slick package. Very well finished. Smooth action, good UI for the targeted buyer. I can live with some warts in the UI. When I wasn't horrified by the network, I was worried about the iPhone's durability, especially with its screen. I don't carry my G1 with me all the time, but I do carry the BB with me... and I carried BB's with me since 2004. I've done things to my BB's I can't believe they survived. Yardwork, junkyard, working on the house. I've covered them with dirt and dust... dropped them in water... crushed them, dropped them... only ever broke one, when I clipped the corner of the screen hard on a rack while moving some heavy servers around. I also got a hole in my pants and drew blood... so I can't really blame the phone.

Yeah, I read that... but I'm not putting a lot of stock in his opinion. He gave Jaguar/Land Rover an 'A'... citing the ugly blacked out Jaguar C pillars and Land Rover light jewelry as a good things. Ugh.

Well, whats illegal and what Apple does to make the jailbreakers' lives difficult are two different things. Honestly, I don't follow jailbreaking the iPhone much anymore, as I don't have to fight off corporate iPhones for their security issues right now. In the Droid world, instead of Jailbreaking issues, some manufacturers/resellers are making it so that if you change the OS, it bricks or reloads the proper OS automagically. They are trying to do this in the name of security... IIRC this is an issue for the Droid Evo and the Droid X... and people are trying to use the GPL to get it so the phones are truly open... the theory being that by creating a phone with hardware that makes it difficult, if not impossible to update the OS with a custom OS, that this would be against the GPL. Should be an interesting battle... but of course, it wouldn't be the first time that enforcing the GPL was an issue.

Unfortunately, it sounds like you got a bargain phone then... low cost, low quality. Unfortunately, just like you can't buy a inexpensive high performance sedan (Pontiac G8) from GM anymore, in the phone world, you have to choose between a Chevy Aveo and a RHD Cadillac XTS with all its instrumentation and manual in Swedish. Yeah, the XTS phone sucks... but its still marginally better at handling a call than the Aveo phone... assuming you can figure out how to make a call ;-) The RAZR was one of the best phones EVER. Good performance for its time, small and stylish... and VERY good call quality. The old StarTac was a good phone, too. Sister got her's secondhand... broke it and reglued it back together so many times it wasn't funny. Must've been 6 years old when it finally died for the last time. Well, knowing that only so much data can be run over a particular radio signal, it only makes sense that as users (and usage) go up, network quality will go down. Thats why so many people are willing to hop to a new radio signal... such as the 4G stuff. Oh... Oh, you poor souls. Yeah, once you've admitted to owning an iPhone, your cellular phone opinions are no longer valid. :-P AT&T was such a hideous network _BEFORE_ the iPhone. When we heard about the IPhone being exclusive to AT&T, it was like a cruel joke. Here's a Lamborghini for $15... but you can't drive it unless you bring Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino with you. What does the Droid offer? Network choice. Thats all I need. It will be interesting when Verizon gets the iPhone... but I will likely continue to stick with the BB and the Droid. No offense to iPhone people here... but a lot iPhone people I know become very smug about their iPhone purchases... kinda like Prius people. What I REALLY like about the Droid are the customized OS packages... such as Cyanogen. Yeah, some of the manufacturers are trying to block that stuff, but its nothing like the iPhone jailbreak/bricking war Apple is waging. I like having a BASH command line on my phone.

The problem, DF is that a lot of batteries don't last well after 1 year. They work... but you can't push your luck. I've had 5 cellular devices in my "family" for years... and after 1 year, the batteries are no longer the same. By two years, you MUST buy a new battery. I just bought a new battery for my G1... less than 2 weeks ago... its already acting funny. Problem is, that replacement batteries aren't OEM. So they NEVER last or behave like OEM. Buying an OEM battery would be nice... but _IF_ they are still available, are outrageously expensive... because the OEMs want you to buy new phones... not new batteries. I don't think asking a battery to work normally for 2 years is so outrageous. I'll tell you why those '90s computers still run. They were made before the Capacitor Plague. Cap rot has destroyed nearly every problematic device I've had for the last 10 years. All because the Asians stealing technology from each other was so rampant that they stole an incomplete electrolyte formula... and it spread so fast before anyone noticed it made for short lived capacitors. Luckily, I'm finding it easier to just replace the caps. Next time you have something mid-2000s run flaky, open it up and look at the capacitors... if they are pushed off the board or the tops are popped... bad cap. Easy for you to say... Or I. I bet we both are well informed and would still recommend different phones... or even different networks. Jitterbug! My GF has a "simple phone"... it still sucks, because as everyone flocks to crappy phones, the bar is lower for everyone else. I make fun of my GF's phone by calling it a "Jitterbug"... until she saw hear 90 year old neighbors had one. Now she wants one. :-( Oh... one last note... Balthy, good old land lines suck now too. Verizon has dropped the ball and it neglecting its copper infrastructure so bad while pushing other services, such as fiber... that I never get clear connections on land lines anymore. Being near the beach don't help. Landlines are nice for a few reasons... Real 911... Land phones work without electric... so you can use 911 when the lights go out. Worse, it seems like you can't even buy a decent land line phone any more.

We have. Its awful. Just tonight... My BB has been running out of memory. So I tried to check to see if I should update the software. Plug phone into computer. USB starts going nuts. It takes three different USB cables before the computer and phone sync up. Then my Sprint card internet craps out. I get that fixed... and my Netgear USB wireless card needs to get pulled out and put back in. Finally, the phone checks... and now it needs to upgrade my loader. Windows crashes. Reboot... install BB Loader. Need to reboot. Back up... software checks... and I've already got the latest software on my BB. 45 minutes... *poof* Some phone/networks are. But you can't buy the latest greatest... you have to do the research ahead of time. My BB on Verizon is pretty good. So is my Tmob G1. My Sprint card was good... but then I got talked into upgrading into a MiFi... its a piece of junk... I should've never changed it... if I would have walked out of the store to think about it overnight, I would've been learned about the MiFi and would have bought a new battery or upgraded to 4G and been fine.

Quite true. Cell Phone battery life is awful even barely one year into ownership. I can't wait to start hearing about it with EVs...